Steven Erikson: “I have a growing aversion to writing violent scenes”

For a reader who knows nothing about the ‘Malazan’ decalogy. ‘The book of the dead’. What is Malaz?

Malaz is the story of another world where magic works and men are not the only species.

Where to start? Are there any novellas or trilogies you are working on as the beginning of the decade? Is there a shortcut to enter this world?

I recommend you follow the publication order. So for ‘Gardens of the Moon’. Yes, you start in ‘media res’. B.C. It’s like falling into the Roman Empire in 65. It then continues until 128 AD. So there will be things that come before it, and there will be others that will follow. We focus on only a small part of this story.

Ten books with a complex structure are presented as a real challenge for the descending reader.

I ask the reader to believe in what I have done. I take you by the hand and guide you through the story, and when the time comes, I’ll give you the information you need. It’s okay to not catch everything that happens: It will be told eventually.

Unlike other writers, he did not develop a magic system with an internal logic that had to be understood and memorized. Like other authors where everything seems like a role-playing game with certain rules.

No, there is no system. There is none of this, because magic evokes curiosity and mystery. If the spell is fully explained, it is no longer magic. ‘Magic system’ is an oxymoron. If everything is explained, it is technology, in which case magic, which survives through legends, mythology and storytelling, has a different purpose than its original purpose. We can compare this more to the Iliad. Magic and the intervention of the gods into the mortal realm were commonplace. Homer never explains the spell.

Tell us something about the ‘paths’ in your universe.

It is as if reality has more than one layer and we can only perceive one of these layers of which we are a part, as the observable reality around us. But there are other forces acting on other layers, and paths are the way a person can reach them and extract elements from them.

There’s a cosmic fear there.

Well yes.

There are layers of the present and the past in the same reality… In his books, we must assume the complex plan of cities and empires that confront each other in the present and the past. How has your training as an anthropologist and archaeologist affected your work?

Too much. When you pass through the landscape you are walking on the surface. But what archeology tells you is that there are things underneath that we can’t see, but it’s those things that shape what we see on the surface. This is very much like writing down events that occur on the surface, but everything underneath is what gives meaning to those actions.

They created Malaz as a role-playing game with Ian C. Esslemont, and each wrote their own novels about that world. How are they organized?

In a very flexible way. What you wrote is actually based more on the game we made. And he remembers these games differently than I do, but that makes it more fun.

Is it fair to say that Tolkien was part of a whole generation of writers who reformulated themes such as the understanding of heroes, race, gender, etc.?

Let’s see, there are many common tropes in fantasy that you need to work with. What we wanted in terms of metafiction was to eliminate these tropes. One of the lessons I learned very early in my writing program was that if you find a cliché in a sentence, don’t be afraid, dive into the heart of the cliché because it has become that cliché for a good reason. It’s not always about avoiding tropes, it’s about exploring, dismantling and rearranging them. I leave it to others to decide where I stand regarding Tolkien. But Stephen Donaldson and the Thomas Covenant series were a direct response to Tolkien, they struck a dialogue and the rest of us followed suit. Donaldson is a precedent and we are inspired by him. It was he who brought epic fantasy into adulthood.

Within this formulation, a darker and more realistic approach to violence comes into play. Grim-dark is the trend it relates to. Must exaggeration, so as not to glorify the hero and the war, also run the danger of trivializing it, taking pleasure in blood and viscera?

Yes, this is a big risk. It can desensitize the audience. But this comes not from literature, but from cinema and television. We are exposed to violence. One of the things we don’t often see in violent movies and television is the consequences. So what literature can do is to discover them. I must admit, at least in my case, that as I write I feel a growing aversion to writing violent scenes. I really don’t like it. Even if it’s an integral part of the genre. So when I write these, I do it in a journalistic style, I just describe what happened because that’s not what’s important, what’s important is what the characters have to face next.

Wounds and scars.

Definitely. One of my biggest influences was Vietnam War literature. Authors such as Tim O’Brien or ‘Short-Timers’, based on Gustav Hasford’s novel ‘Full Metal Jacket’, deal with the attitude towards violence in their works. It’s not sarcastic, but it has a de-escalating effect because these are people just trying to survive under these conditions. But what these stories lack are heroes.

I think you said you were getting a little bored of fantasy and becoming more and more interested in science fiction.

True, but I have a few contracts to fulfill. But basically I read science fiction and non-fiction. And this is not a judgment on reading fantasy. I didn’t read for a long time because that was what I wrote and I didn’t want to be influenced by other writers, but eventually I lost the habit. So I’m not qualified to talk about contemporary fantasy.

What subgenres of science fiction are you interested in? What can we expect you to write about in this area in the future?

I am very interested in deep space exploration. I’m a big fan of Ian M. Banks, Alistair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton… Becky Chambers is amazing…

Chambers’ novels are like ‘Friends’ in space.

Yes and it’s perfect.